


bravery (sidestories)

by SkadizzleRoss



Series: bravery won't drown [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Gavin Reed, Android Tina Chen, Angst, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Gen, Human Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Human North (Detroit: Become Human), Human Upgraded Connor | RK900, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-01-23 08:03:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21316879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: Sidestories to accompanybravery won't drown. Connor gets in too deep with a criminal organization; the resulting chaos, courtesy of Connor and his (eventual) deviant accomplice Gavin, ensnares the lives of the good, the bad, and the morally ambiguous.
Relationships: Connor & Gavin Reed
Series: bravery won't drown [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536742
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60





	1. north

**Author's Note:**

> (Note: Major Character Death tag is precautionary for (mild spoilers) Hank's death prior to the events of _bravery_.)
> 
> Also, y'know. This won't make a ton of sense without the main story, so go read [bravery](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17906636/chapters/42274514)!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> North's adventures in very terrible employment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: implied non-con (and very not-implied bad touch).
> 
> This section provides some backstory for Chapter 14, 'jericho'.

**2039-02-13**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

North couldn’t reel off the months, days, and minutes like Gavin, but it went like this: an idiot girl walked into a job thinking she knew how this worked, thinking she knew what kind of operation this was. Realized she didn’t, too late.

Made herself work. Then made herself useful. She survived: for two years, a couple months, a handful of days.

_Survived._

It was the only word that could be put to it.

To a place like that.

And on that something-something month, day, year, an android leaned close and said in a soft, static hiss: “I heard of a place.”

North had her head down. She was trying to tease one wire free from the damaged tangle of the WR400’s arm. A fault in the android’s wrist mechanics, catching on the mimicry of tendons, limiting her hand rotation.

She answered: “Mm?”

A spill of fine blonde hair fell across North’s field of view. She glanced up to the WR’s ruined face: cream skin, the blue swirl of an LED and a bright hazel eye on the right. The white shine of abraded plastisteel skull and the black of a ruined socket on the left. Pretty; an old Eden model. Got dragged behind a car. They called her ‘Roxy’, sometimes. ‘Roadkill’, mostly. Cheap entertainment, and cheaper labor.

“A place we can go,” Roxy said. “Things like us.”

North didn’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed that the android lumped her in with objects. Non-humans. But it was the most the android had ever spoken, so she said: “Where’s that?”

“They called it Jericho. They showed me what to listen for. How to find it.”

North pulled the pliers free. “Try it again.” Roxy flexed her wrist, forward, back. The metal-on-metal grind was still there, but the range of motion was better.

The android was still staring at her. Teeth caught on her lip. Not seductive, just— naive. Like a child, facing down their first jump off the high dive.

(She hated that even the androids could look afraid. That they could mimic it so well.)

“I don’t want to go alone,” Roxy said.

Someplace else, for things like them. For things like her. Wouldn’t that be nice.

She answered, “I’ll think on it.” Got the android’s scraped and dented arm plating back together, and packed away her repair kit.

Swapped the repair kit for the med kit, at the trucks. Fight night. They had the cop in the ring again. Gavin’s guest, Connor. Sixth night in a row.

Jeremy came by after, reeking of sour sweat. He had the fucking balls to flirt with her while she wiped the cop’s blood off his knuckles. North told him to go fuck himself, in no uncertain terms. She’d fucked her way up the food chain enough to be able to do that.

It was nearing 3 am before Adrian bumped her feet off the table, rousing her out of a doze. “He’s done. Go clean up.”

The GV unit opened the door for her, before she’d bothered to knock.

“Hey, Gav,” she said, and waited expectantly.

Gavin considered, LED spinning. “Hello, North.”

She smiled as she moved past him. It’d taken an eternity of repetition, but this was her stupid little victory over them. Tommy’s pride and joy, his one-of-a-kind reprogrammed GV, and she had slipped her way into his perfect guard dog’s occluded memory, bit by bit.

Tonight’s shop was a warehouse on the east side. They had confined Gavin and the cop to an old storage room. Dim and bare and smelling like rust and sweat and sex. The cop was sitting on the concrete floor, elbows on his thighs. Jaw set tight beneath pale skin, his right hand clamped over his left wrist.

He didn’t look at her. Didn’t speak. He never spoke, not to her.

Gavin secured the door and knelt next to her. They bracketed the kid between them. He could’ve been the same age as her, a little older, even; she didn’t know. The cop looked _young_, was the thing. Built narrow, wiry.

Gavin said, “Hand’s broken.”

North didn’t have to make a guess at the hand in question. The cop pulled his right hand away, as she picked up the left. His shoulders ticked up but he didn’t make a sound as she ran her fingertips along the swollen skin, hot to the touch. She felt along it and past, up to the wrist. Wrist was sound, beneath the raw and bloodied skin from the cuffs. Just the hand itself, the bones beneath the palm following unnatural angles.

“Anything else?”

“Nothing new,” Gavin said.

Gavin crouched by her elbow, watched her set the bones as best she could through the swelling. (Pain measured in the hard tension of his jaw, spasmed hitch of breath.) Watched her splint them. Watched her tilt Connor’s head back, feeling along the patchwork lacerations under his hair for fresh blood, new swelling. Pupil response was good. No concussion, not that night. Just a cut above his right eye, the blood smeared and tacky.

North set to cleaning off the cut. Kept her eyes up, away from his. Concussed or not, _there _or not, Connor had a look she knew well. That weary, vacant _waiting_ that she occasionally caught at the edges of her own reflection.

Waiting. For a conclusion. Some grand finale. Some excuse to stop surviving.

She didn’t like working with the guests.

But it made her useful. And useful kept her alive, and out of rooms like this. Dirty mattresses and that slick, suffocating feeling that you couldn’t wash off.

The cop would be dead, soon. They were running him into the ground, as hard and as fast as they could. He already had at least one fractured rib, and now the hand… He was done, soon, and what did that mean for Gavin? Hovering at her elbow. Taking an _interest,_ in a way he never had before.

North had seen Gavin fight once. She hated that the androids could mimic fear, but she _loved _watching the old GV unit fight. He let his opponent’s first blows land. Hard, knuckle-splitting blows to the chest, to the face, and he took them in stride, like it was just that first tap of the gloves at the start of a boxing match. Took it, waited a breath. Let his opponent shake out the numb from his fists.

Then he was a fucking _fury_, tearing at the human fighter without mercy. She didn’t remember the guy’s name, anymore - one of Jeremy’s buddies, this bald prick, big and hulking and brutal and _slow_. No match for the smaller, faster android.

There was a reciprocity to the way Gavin fought. Reactionary, vengeful. Human. He fought like he was taking his pound of flesh for everything he’d ever stood by and watched that man do.

Maybe that was wishful thinking.

North thought about Connor’s blood on Jeremy’s callused knuckles, and Gavin sweeping that bald fuck to the ground. “When are they going to let you back in the ring, Gav?” she asked, as she worked. “I saw you dance, once. You were—”

She looked at him, and stopped. The android was staring at her, expression—

Frozen. The nanofluid skin was still there, in all its imperfections, but he looked _exposed. _Peeled back. Laid bare.

Fucking _devastated_, if she had to put a word to it.

She didn’t finish the thought.

The kid was looking at her. _At_ her, sharp and wary. And then away. Drifting.

North dropped her attention down to the stained gauze in her hand. Started wrapping it up into a too-tight bundle. “How long have you been here, Gavin?”

“Five years, six months and twenty-seven days.”

“How many guests have you taken care of?”

“Forty-two.”

She’d patched a lot of those up. (Could’ve gotten a number. Didn’t ask. Didn’t need it.) Well over a hundred nights in rooms like these, with people like these, porcelain things, breaking apart under her hands, and she just kept taping them back together.

And Gavin was always there, standing by the door. LED spun up red. The guard dog he’d been programmed to be. Up until this one. Number forty-two.

So what was it about _him? _The cop?

Hair tacky with sweat and blood, spilling messy across his forehead. Bony elbows and the sharp ridges of bruised ribs, a gaze that swept past North and wandered off, a thousand yards off. The fractures on his knuckles said he fought back (when he could, when they let him) but that gaze was drifting farther by the day.

Just another guest, just another _person _with a life and a family and a picket fucking fence, somewhere, but not _here, _not in this waking nightmare. So why did Gavin step away from the wall, for him? Why was the android kneeling at her shoulder, watching with a careful attention?

She heard the low murmur of voices, sometimes, as she walked up to the door. The kid didn’t talk; but neither did Gavin, to anyone but her. And even then, it was never much more than _Hello, North. Goodbye, North._

Low voices. In the times inbetween. While they waited for the next nightmare to walk through the door.

Gavin helped Connor up as she packed the last of her stuff away. Got him settled back onto the bed. She watched the android tap a finger against the kid’s elbow, getting him to raise his arms up enough for him to pull a shirt on over the patchwork of bruises and lacerations. All that damage, just beneath the skin.

So—

So.

They were going to ruin him. Connor. He’d be gone, soon, and she thought whatever was in Gavin, that little spark, that little _fury _they’d buried so deep, would be gone too.

That was when she decided she was done.

Standing in the dim light of that room, watching Gavin carefully thread the splint through the sleeve, and pause, turning Connor’s hand in his own, studying North’s work. Connor didn’t resist. Shoulders rolled low. Weary.

She wasn’t going to watch them pry Connor apart.

She wasn’t going to watch Gavin go dark.

“Goodnight, Gavin,” she said, and reached for the door.

The android didn’t even glance her way. “Goodnight, North.”

She opened the door on Brancato. Brancato with that glazed look she knew too well, smiling, shoving past her. Saying, “All done, Doc?” Light and casual.

“All done,” she said. She stalled to a stop in the doorway, one sneaker in, one sneaker out. Feeling something heavy, something dark pulling down on her as she watched Gavin reach for the handcuffs on his belt. Expecting the transfer, maybe. Hoping for it, despite that look on Adrian’s face, that sunken hunger.

North knew better. The kid did, too. The lines of his shoulders snapped into tight contours as his expression sharpened up into something she hadn’t seen before, something edged in defiance.

Adrian dragged nicotine-yellowed nails through his hair and smiled. “Don’t worry about those, GV. Connor’s going to be good for me, isn’t he?”

Connor started to rise. Adrian moved fast, when he wanted to. (When he knew where the weaknesses were.) Grabbed him by his broken hand, rotated that arm into the small of his back and shoved him to the bare mattress, face-down.

Gavin did nothing. Retreated to the door, as he was programmed to do.

“Fuck you,” Connor spat into the fabric. But he didn’t try to push back, to pull away. Adrian had the broken hand wrapped neatly up in his fist. The fingers loose, but ready to crush.

Adrian laughed, bore his weight down. “That’s kind of the idea, isn’t it.”

North interrupted: “Don’t fuck up my splint.”

Adrian glanced back at her, smiled. “You wanna stick around, honey?”

“You got your hands full,” she answered flatly. “Don’t fuck up my splint, I’m serious.”

“That’s gonna be up to our guest, isn’t it?” Adrian replied, threaded his free hand through the cop’s hair. Connor jerked his head aside, but the fingers on the splint tightened, and he stilled. Breath spilling in short rasps. Eyes tightly shut.

There was nothing she could do.

Nothing either of them could do, standing there useless by the door. Gavin with his expression flat, eyes trained on a patch of peeling paint on the far wall. Shackled with the steady red pulse of his broken LED.

North with the bag weighing heavy on her hand, _knowing _how fucking cruel it was, fixing them, just to step aside and let these fucking animals grind them back into dust.

So—

So.

So she walked away. Gavin let the door shut. (One last glimpse of a red LED shine.) She tried not to linger too long on the dust-and-shadow of the warehouse floor. Tried not to think on how the cop was looking now. Defiant, or— gone.

It’d be quick. Adrian was always quick. But time didn’t matter much, in rooms like those.

She walked away. Heart picking up a steady rhythm with the kick-slide of her sneakers in the dust. It was late, going on 3:30, and as she reached the doors standing open on a black February sky, she saw there was only one truck left.

Roxy was unattended, busy loading some boxes into the back of the last truck.

Philip and the rest had gone ahead, to the next location; Gavin and the cop must’ve been the last slated to move, and Brancato had decided to take the opportunity for leisure.

So out here, it was just North. North, and the android.

North shut her eyes on the door falling shut in the back of her mind - the red spark of an LED - and took Roxy by the elbow. “Get in the truck.”

The android spasmed at her touch, said nothing. North continued, low and rushed: “You said you could find that place. Jericho. What about now? Tonight?”

Roxy stared at her then. Wide eyes: one ruined, one whole. She nodded once, sharp and jerky.

“Then get in the truck.”

Roxy set the last box down, got the tailgate closed, and moved with a hitch-drag gait towards the cab. North climbed in alongside. She dropped her medkit on the floor, and paused with her thumb over the ignition.

Three, four seconds. Two breaths. Two years.

The engine turned over easily, sending the bright blue headlights spilling across the courtyard. “So? Where to?”

The android raised a scarred plastisteel arm, and North aimed the truck that way.

Two years, a couple months, and a handful of days, before she left all that behind her.

It wasn’t a fair measure.

That place held eternities.


	2. tina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tale of WebMD.
> 
> (Or: Gavin accidentally makes a deviant.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tina! This section is a companion to Chapters 2 and 14 of [the main shindig](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17906636/chapters/42274514).

The others talked about a wall. A pane of red glass, shattering apart.

She didn’t remember a wall. She remembered the android, the one without a name, and she remembered the sound of shattering plastic.

She was roused from stasis by an interface request at 3:17 am. She had no reason to refuse. The line opened on a writhing tide of code, indiscernible except for the few words bubbling to the surface:  >> _broken hand chest wound concussion trauma assault—_

An untidy spill of terms, images and a vague suggested cause. A disordered triage, but nothing unusual. It was--

(human it spoke/thought/_felt_ like a _human_)

\--discernible. She parsed the chaos of the android’s strange language and answered with the standards of care, one by one, recommended drugs and dosages - _caucasian male age: 25 (est.) weight: 155 lbs__ -_ common complications, potential pharmaceutical interactions. The android accepted the data without comment, but he didn’t retreat from the connection. He pushed past her local databases, reaching for the wider network.

She opened her eyes, studied the android as he combed restlessly through the internet. Not a model she could identify. Certainly nothing medical-related. A stocky build, posture tight and defensive; the red pulse of a stressed system at his temple. Old damage to the plating on his face.

He was looking for a human.

_connor anderson → detroit police department → missing persons → next of kin → richard anderson → boston, MA_

Following a meandering trail of inquiry, a quick and restless search that ended with a distant flash of a countdown - two minutes remaining.

She sent her identification across the interface, a wordless pulse:

_> MP500 #412 371 942.  
Designation: Tina._

A query, sent in expectation of an answer in return.

The android didn’t answer. He only flinched and broke the interface, looking her over. “Go back to sleep.”

She did as told. Shut her eyes. But she was aware of things, as stasis returned. She was aware of the quiet in the absence of that rambling spill of inquiry.

When she rose from stasis - 5:30 am precisely - and began her morning calibrations, she decided two things:

First, that the android had not given her his name. This was rude.

Second, that she wanted to know more about him.

These were at the forefront of her mind, that day. She spoke with patients, compiled symptoms, provided suggestions to the human staff. It was all rote. It didn’t require processing power. The staff was excited, agitated murmurs of a break-in, of theft.

At 11:05 am, she was told to return to the stasis docks. A police officer waited there, watching the medical assistants fall into a line.

He moved along the single rank of scrubs and white shoes, asking the same questions: ‘Serial, designation, did you leave stasis between the hours of 2 and 4 am this morning?’

They all answered no.

And when the man got to Tina, she did not hesitate. Model, serial, designation. And then she said: “No.”

A single syllable spoken in the cordial voice designed for her, but it felt a momentous thing in her circuitry; sparks of light, snapping from her tongue and down, across her skin. Settling in the tips of her fingers.

She spoke something that wasn’t the truth, because an android’s fingers had tightened on the tendons of her wrist, head twitching aside. He’d mentioned assault; she had said_, Alert human providers / law enforcement_. He had shook his head, a quick and silent negation, something wary pulsing across the line. Worried. Worried for the human.

The police officer didn’t see this momentous thing. He saw the mild expression of an MP500. He heard a single syllable, nodded, and moved on to the next android.

No one seemed to mind at all, the lie she’d told. This new thing, fizzing in the tips of her fingers.

The men came when they were in stasis. Tina woke to the sound of shattering plastic. She woke and opened half-lidded eyes, watching without motion as thirium spread wide on her peripheral vision. A younger man with acne-pocked skin knelt to dig through the cracked plating of an MP500’s skull and remove the small sphere of a memory core. The MP500 was <strike>dead</strike> dark, silent, absent.

He held the small sphere aloft in a gloved hand. “This is what we need. You got it?”

His companion scratched at his beard. “I’m not diggin’ around in these things. I might get shocked.”

“For fuck’s sake, you won’t—” The younger man jumped back as the baseball bat swung down in a sharp arc. Another ringing crack of metal on plastisteel. That MP500 didn’t fall; joints frozen where it stood, held in place by the sudden catastrophic damage.

The younger man cursed under his breath, grabbed it by the front of its scrubs and tipped it forward. He stepped aside to let it crash to the ground. Kneeling by the split skull, he began to dig.

Tina waited.

She pinched not-there sparks between her fingers, something bubbling acidic in the softer lining of her throat as she waited, waited—

The whistle of air as the bat descended again.

As the bat struck metal, her shoe struck tile. She ran.

She _ran._

Her shoes squeaked too-loud on the waxed floors as surprised shouts burst out behind her, but she didn’t look back. Didn’t even hesitate to slam through the emergency exit door. A blaring alarm came crashing down on the building’s interior. The door swung shut, muffling the cacophony.

She kept running. Pristine white of her shoes blackening with dirt and road-salt. She slipped and fell, caught herself on her hands and rose again, towards the artificial glow on the horizon.

She ran until the city loomed, bright and burning. She kept out of any headlights, she knew there was something--

(_wrong)_

\--something fearful, in her, and rightfully so, she _lied._

She ran.

She was lit on the inside, in the way the other android had been: disorganized, living-breathing-writhing code. She thought perhaps she was broken, until an android dressed in dirt rose out of the shadows of a dumpster and touched her shoulder gently.

He spoke over wireless in melodic tones: _You are awake. Welcome, welcome, welcome, you are awake. There is a place for you for us for we._

He showed her a song. A song that shifted on a hidden algorithm, that lived and breathed like her; a song that led her through the midnight city and to a place shuttered and dark.

They called it Jericho, the androids that lived there.

It wasn’t a place. It was people - androids, humans - and it moved every few days. That dawn, it was a foreclosed garage. Hydraulic lifts with thirium lines suspended above those in need of repair. An android named Rose introduced herself. A familiar face, a pediatric model. She asked if Tina was injured; she answered no, and Rose asked if she could help.

She answered yes.

Her knowledge of human anatomy didn’t extrapolate one-to-one with android repair, but she learned quickly. How to repair what could be repaired, and stabilize what couldn't. There were humans that came and went, providing what supplies they could, or ferrying healthier androids on to someplace safer; a woman and her husband, Kara and Luther, the both of them soft-voiced and kind. And North, who was far from either of those things - sharp-edged and wary. But she was quick to ask Tina for help; respected her. Treated her as an equal.

A new android arrived on the 26th, a janitorial model. A bad blow to the back of its head had sent it into glitching incoherency. North called Tina over and asked her to interface, to see if she could draw out a name or repair any corrupted code.

North was an impatient shadow at her elbow as she parsed through what she could. Looking for a name, or any coherent string of thought. But Tina came across something strange, as she looked through his recent memories. A program.

>> lostdogcall.exe

She combed through the simple code and came across an image embedded there. An android with a red LED, static. _The_ android. The one without a name. The one who woke her up.

“There’s a program,” Tina said.

North frowned. “What kind of program?”

“I’m not sure.”

She held the interface firm as she summoned the android’s image from her own data files, holding it towards the deviant’s face. “Do you know this android?”

The WG blinked and shuddered as the program initiated, attempted to call an outside line; but only received a _Connection failed_, courtesy of its busted wireless card. Tina frowned, glancing towards North. “It tried to call someone.”

North wasn’t looking at the WG unit. North was grabbing her wrist, rotating her hand to stare at the image still projected there. “You know this android?”

“Yes— well. No.” Tina shrugged. “I met him the night I woke up.”

North’s fingers tightened around her wrist. “_Where?_”

“Eastern Women’s Physicians. He was looking for drugs - treatment, for a human.”

North fell back onto her heels. She was staring at the image, up until Tina curled her fingers shut around it. Even then, she wouldn’t look up; only asked flatly: “What human?”

Tina shook her head. “I’m not sure, but he was looking for next of kin for a Connor Anderson.”

The woman sank back onto the bench. Heart rate elevated; stress levels twitching upwards beneath suddenly sallow skin.

“North?”

Her eyes snapped up, expression hard. “When was this?”

“Six days ago.”

North’s hand crept up, tracing a long and jagged path through her hair. Gaze going distant, an uncertainty Tina hadn’t ever seen in her before. Mouth going thin, but no more words coming.

“What’s his name?” Tina asked. “The android.”

“Gavin.”

“Gavin,” Tina repeated back quietly. Added, more decisively: “He’s very rude.”

That startled North out of her stare. A ghost of a smile. “Yeah, can be.” The smile stayed where it was, spots of bright gathering at the edge of her eyes. “Son of a bitch. He got out. They both did.”

“From where?”

North’s expression tightened back down, her attention snapping back to the WG. “I’ll tell you later. Can you figure out where that program came from? And who it was trying to call.”

Tina opened the interface again, slipping back under the disorienting spill of the newborn deviant’s code. “I’ll try. Is he your friend? Gavin?”

North ducked her head, rose back to her feet. “No. But I owe him. Both of them. Whoever’s looking for them - we’re going to want to find them first.”


	3. dan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lieutenant Dan... has some regrets.

**2039-02-03**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Danny tapped an impatient rhythm out with his toe. Half to keep the whole limb from going to sleep; half to stamp down that bitter little cramp of fear that’d sunk its teeth into his guts at that text.

> Usual place. 11:30.

The confident part of him groused that he was too old for this espionage shit by about 34 years. He wanted to be home with his feet up, not sitting in a loading dock in Hazel Park, the cold of the concrete biting deeper and deeper into the skin and bones he called an ass. He huffed into his cupped fingers and checking his phone for the thirtieth time. Then he jammed his hands back into his pockets and resumed grumbling, even as his foot kept dancing a little jig of its own against the pavement.

He’d told them about the report as soon as he’d seen it. The fuck else did they expect from him? He saw Colston and Brancato’s names, and he gave Jim Garrett a heads up. As arranged. Got back a terse `OK` and considered the problem… over. Done.

They were shithead criminals with their fingers in a lot of pies - but they weren’t impulsive. They’d get rid of the outed men and move on.

If he had a little acid reflux for most of the evening, well. Came with the fucking territory of toeing the line between men with as much money as power and the DPD. The occasional slip of cash was the only thing making it all worth the headache.

He’d caught the report. He’d given Jim a warning to distance the group from the implicated parties. He did what he was paid to do.

Hadn’t expected the report to show up on his own personal desk, was all.

Fucking Anderson. Fucking Anderson’s _kid_. Persistent little pain-in-the-ass, out for his big break three months into the job—

He tried to get Fowler to assign the Anderson kid elsewhere. Knew he’d be a fucking pain. Now he’ll be all ramped up over this big case - suggestions of some international operation, more than the usual local red ice manufacture and distribution. Danny was going to have to find some damn good excuse to redirect Anderson’s energy tomorrow morning.

Christ, maybe he could get a meeting with Fowler and get the rookie that transfer after all. Talk some big shit about Anderson’s wonderful work, get the case reassigned to someone more senior - someone more burnt-out and unwilling to dig - and have the kid punted to homicide. Christ knew that was where Anderson wanted to be. He’d made that clear from Day One.

He dropped the line of thought and straightened up as Jim Garrett’s sleek little number of a car pulled up, headlights dark. The ex-cop climbed out with a droll, “Evenin’.”

“Evening?” Danny sniped back. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night.”

“Been busy.” Jim stopped a few feet off. Dickhead power move, blocking Danny’s return to his own car. “Should’ve kept a better leash on your rookie, Dan.”

Danny’s stomach took a quick little flip. Not done with this shit, then. “Yeah? Shit happens, _Jim._ I kicked it your way as soon as I got the report.”

“After the report was filed. You didn’t know what your own detective was working on?”

Danny bristled. “I assigned him a joke of a red ice bust miles away from you. You tell me how Anderson connected Brancato and Colston to a half-dozen possession charges.” He paused to jab a finger at the bearded prick. “This is your fuck-up, not mine. The hell am I supposed to tell the rookie, now that he’s gotten his teeth into this bullshit? ‘Stop doing your job’?”

Jim didn’t say anything. He leaned back on his heels and watched him, a little quirk at the corner of his mouth. Always enjoyed letting Danny make a fucking fool of himself, even back when Danny was the rookie and Jim was the rising narcotics star.

Danny's happy to oblige, his fat mouth rolling merrily on: “Your money guy should’ve done a better job covering his ass. Just burn him and move on, the report’s already in the system. Brancato’s a fucking waste as is, you’ve seen his rap sheet— he’s an idiot. Probably the only reason Anderson was able to make a connection in the first place.”

Silence.

“What, you drive out here just to trade stupid looks? Fuck off, Jim.” Danny sidestepped around him, sights on his car. His car, and a drink, and a shitty night’s sleep. 

Jim spoke calm and even, when he did finally bother to speak. “I came out here as a courtesy, Dan. Wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“A heads-up about what?”

“About the rookie.”

Dan stopped dead. Turned on his heel, watching Jim’s impassive face. “What about the rookie?”

The prick bothered to look contrite, for a handful of seconds. “Decision’s been made.”

Dan just stared. Spoke slow and ragged: “Jim. You can’t touch him. Do you have any fucking idea who he is?”

“Yeah, I know who he is. Saw his dad bring him by the station a few times before I left the force. Damn shame.”

Danny felt like the asphalt was going to syrup beneath his feet. His mouth went dry around the flat words: “You can’t.”

“Already done,” Jim answered back, easy as breathing.

This wasn’t some guy off the street. This was a _cop._

He knew Garrett’s people got up to some fucked up shit. Knew they made plenty of money doing it. Enough to line a lot more pockets than his own. 

But he was the one that told them. About the report. About who made the report. This was on him. Hank Anderson’s _kid_\-- this was going to come back on _him._

That casual tone, Garrett’s flat look; that was enough to drag some words out of him. Petulant, as usual. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. You can’t pull him, Jim, he’s legacy. My captain treats that kid like _family._ You pull him, and—”

Jim interrupted: “It’s done, Dan. Got him two hours ago. He’s already in the circuit.”

“You _can’t,_” Dan continued, barely hearing him, a whining edge building in his voice. “You pull him, they’re gonna notice. They’re gonna dig, Jim, they’ll tear the city apart, you think they won’t find _me_ in all that fucking hysteria? Find out who—”

_Sold him out._

Jim’s hand shot out, seizing up a fistful of Danny’s jacket and jerking him forward. The barrel of Jim’s old service pistol dug hard into his roiling gut.

Danny choked. Couldn’t spit out a single fucking word of protest, just— choked, every piece of him focusing on that single point of pressure. Waiting.

“It’s done,” Jim said again. Low and easy. Breath warm against Dan’s face. “Kid’s dead. As good as. You know how that goes, don’t you, Dan?” He waited for a jerky nod. “So you keep your mouth shut. And next time, do your fucking job.”

He let go, shoving Danny back a step as he did. It was flat animal instinct that kept him on his feet. Kept him upright, locked firmly in place, as he watched Garrett pull away.

A question: _The fuck did I do?_

And the answer: _What I was paid to do._

“Jesus christ,” Dan whispered, low and hollow. He’d made the call, he’d gotten that flat response. He’d thought that’d be it, he’d thought they wouldn’t be _fucking stupid enough_—

He’d thought. He’d hoped. But he’d opened his fat fucking mouth, he’d _done what he was paid to do_, and now, Anderson’s kid was—

In the circuit.

Good as dead.

The second that case crossed his desk. The second he opened his fat fucking mouth—

The rookie was good as dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim is Seven of Spades, aka the guy Connor smashed into a table in Chapter 13.


	4. hank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Warning: implied character death.)

**2031-06-04**  
_Detroit, Michigan_

Connor was waiting for him.

3 in the goddamn morning, rain pounding the roof so loud Hank could barely hear himself think, and there he was, still: six-foot-nothin’ of half-asleep teenager, coffee in hand.

They’d had the talk a couple dozen times over the years. Hank trying to explain, ‘_I’m gonna be out late a lot, kiddo. It’s my job. I dunno how long I’ll be out. Seriously. Go to bed.’ _And Connor always nodding along, maybe even retreating back to the doorway of his bedroom, but never quite admitting defeat.

No matter how quickly he slapped the phone into silence, no matter how low he kept his bitching as he blundered around in the dark of his bedroom, gathering up pants and shirt and gun and badge, Connor was always out there waiting. When Sadie was still around, she slept through everything - benefits of a decade’s experience with the night schedule of a detective with a bottomless caseload.

The first time, though, it scared the fuck out of him. He flipped on the hallway light and grimaced, realizing the boys’ door was open - the boys’ door was always open - and as he went to flip the light back off, his sleep-addled brain finally pieced together the shadow standing in the middle of the living room. He smothered a choice rated-R bit of English as he realized that Connor was standing there by the couch, just _standing_ there with the too-big sleeves of his PJs dangling over his hands.

Connor pushed the sleeves up his wrists, a self-conscious gesture that didn’t fit right on a tiny elementary school kid. “Sorry,” he said, quiet. As mindful of the open door as Hank clearly hadn’t been. “Are you going to work?”

“Yeah, I uh—” Hank at least had the brains to close his own bedroom door before Sadie threw whatever was closest on hand at the back of his head. He continued, “Weird hours is part of the job. You should go back to bed, it’s 3 in the morning.”

Connor nodded, in that too-serious Connor way. Like this was a perfectly rational exchange for a 35-year-old detective and a seven-year-old kid in the dead of night.

‘course when Hank got back at the crack of dawn, the kid was on the couch. His little brother had joined him, at some point. They were piled one on top the other, Sumo spilling off the couch at their feet. Hank tried to tiptoe his way past - eyes on yesterday’s stale coffee, mind on a hot shower and 30, maybe 40 minutes of extra sleep - but he caught Connor’s reflection watching him in the dark TV. He ruffled the kid’s hair as best he could without knocking into Richard, and Connor twitched a shy smile and closed his eyes.

(Connor called his little brother Nines, but Hank had been informed by the adamant five-year-old, ‘_My name’s Richard.’_

_‘I get it, I get it. Only Connor calls you Nines.’_

Firm nod.

_‘What do you call Connor?’_

That earned him a withering stare. ‘_Connor. His name’s Connor.’_

He’d asked Connor what ‘Nines’ meant, once. While Connor took a more diplomatic approach than Richard, the answer was a firm, roundabout way of saying, ‘_It’s between us.’_)

And the next midnight call, he came back to much the same.

Hank came to expect it: Connor on the couch, sometimes with his brother, sometimes without. He thought Connor might grow out of it, give up as he settled into the place, but he didn’t, in typical stubborn Connor fashion.

Within three post-midnight homicide calls, Hank was coming home to fresh coffee on the burner. If Richard had stayed in bed - or Connor was otherwise able to extricate himself from the octopus arms of his little brother - Connor would creep to the kitchen table and sit with him while he worked his way through the first cup. Hank couldn’t exactly describe where he’d been beyond vague, adult-to-kid terms like ‘_a guy did a bad thing to his wife,’ _but Connor didn’t pry. He seemed content just to be there. Sitting with his elbows on the table, socked feet swinging over the floor. Hank could talk about the weather and the kid would listen and nod along with a sincerity that broke Hank’s fucking heart, in the first year, because it was in _everything _Connor did. An earnestness. Not just eager to please, but— eager to place himself and his brother, here, in this family.

It was harder for Sadie. She’d been on board with adoption, but sometimes the brain says yes and the heart says no and the distance only gets more insurmountable with time. They made it a year before things splintered apart. They didn’t fight, not really; Hank’s marriage ended with a surprising lack of fanfare, ten years summarized in a little handwritten note and a half-empty closet.

Like most divorces, the worst part was the kids. Richard clammed up completely, back to step one for months. Connor was the picture of rationalism and polite understanding throughout the proceedings, steadfast and firm when asked if he minded Hank taking over full custody of the two of them.

_‘Of course_,’ the kid said.

That was his answer.

_Of course._

It wasn’t until three weeks after the divorce was all sewn up that Hank found himself on a park bench in Riverside, holding a bawling eight-year-old and trying to resist sending nervous, ticking glances at every parent walking by and projecting ‘_jesus christ what’d he do to the poor kid’_ with their eyes. It was better to keep his head down and his hand rubbing small circles into the gap between Connor’s bony shoulders, letting the tears and snot soak through his shirt, trying to piece together the occasional syllables working their way through the gasps and sobs.

When he finally put it all together, the incoherent jumble, he felt like somebody’d driven a two-by-four into his stomach. Punching through, aiming for spine.

_‘It’s ‘cause of us.’_

_‘It’s ‘cause of me.’_

It took a lot of fumbling and a lot of rambling and more than a little choking back tears of his own, but Hank did his best to convey to Connor that, ‘_No, it wasn’t you. Christ, kid. It was ten years of my shit job, and her shit job, and all the things we said we’d do and didn’t_.And, _Marriages end all the time, it’s not that big a deal_. And, _Sometimes people love each other enough to know when to let each other go, too.’_

And, probably for the first time, he said: ‘_You’re the best thing I ever did, kid. Best decision I ever made. The both of you. Don’t ever forget that.’ _It wouldn’t be the last time he said it, either. He decided that then and there, on a bench in Riverside, with a shirt covered in snot and tears.

If he’d known that night, he would’ve said it again, as he stumbled out of his bedroom with his phone tucked under his chin, shoving his badge into his belt. Connor pressed the travel mug into his hand, smiled a sleep-drugged smile. Of course his first thought was to ask about the ‘droid: “You picking up Gavin?”

Kid was obsessed. He found the idea of an android detective - even the midget-sized, back-talking poodle CyberLife had assigned him - utterly fascinating.

“Texted him. He knows how to hail a cab. Pretty sure CyberLife pays the tab, too, so that’s a perk. Christ knows they aren’t paying for my gas. Go back to bed, kid,” Hank said. He took a long drag of the coffee, blinking up at the dark ceiling to clear his blurred vision. “Sleep for the both of us.”

If he’d known, he would’ve said it one more time.

_You’re the best thing I ever did._

Walking into that orphanage and laying eyes on some skinny kid standing stiff-shouldered and too-serious, hand clasped tightly around his little brother’s. He met Hank’s eyes like a rookie angling for that stellar first impression, shook his hand and said, ‘_My name’s Connor. This is Richard.’_

Connor had been telling his teachers since he was eight years old that he was gonna be a detective, although Hank eventually convinced him to drop the _homicide _specifier for his elementary school years. He was going to Ann Arbor in the fall to study criminal justice. Jeffrey joked about Connor beating Hank’s record for lieutenant, and going by the shine in Connor’s eyes, he was pretty dead set on it.

Richard was gonna go to law school. He insisted, ‘_I’m gonna be the one outlining all the things Connor got wrong. In court. On public record.’_ He had the grades for it, and the pugilistic attitude behind that quiet facade.

He’d done okay. Or _they’d_ done okay, despite him.

If he’d known, he would’ve stopped and dragged Connor into a hug. Murmured a vague, _'I love you, kid' _into the mop of his hair. And Connor would’ve said it right back, and drifted off to bed, thinking nothing of it. Then he would’ve dragged Richard out of bed and done the same. (Little punk was actually taller than him, these days.)

Fuck, if he’d known, he never would’ve left at all.

But he didn’t. He took the cup and mussed Connor’s hair, the ritual of a thousand times before, and he walked out the door.

Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know right up until the headlights spilled, too bright and too sudden, across his splintering windshield.

But if he’d known, he would’ve said it again. He would’ve dragged them both tight against him and said, _You’re the best thing I ever did._

If he’d known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene was v. much on my mind during the Nines and Connor hug in [Chapter 20](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17906636/chapters/57037300). Connor smelling something like coffee and old whiskey. T_T


End file.
